Kazuo Ueda's latest comments are quite interesting. On Thursday, he said in parliament that figuring out where the neutral interest rate actually is can basically only be guessed within a vague range—which sounds a bit like he’s dodging the question.

But the market has already picked up on the underlying message: the Bank of Japan is trying to cool down expectations for a possible rate hike in December. Although he didn’t rule anything out, two signals are pretty clear—will they really go for a rate hike in December? It’s hard to say right now, but a rate cut is completely off the table; even if they do hike, don’t expect it to be the start of a tightening cycle—it would at most be a technical adjustment. This “maybe, maybe not” stance is making many people reassess year-end liquidity conditions.